


Of things said too little, and too late

by zeest



Category: Samurai Warriors
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeest/pseuds/zeest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were three of them. There should always be three of them.</p><p>(Three one-shots, grouped together for thematic similarities.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kiyomasa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on names:  
> Sakichi = Mitsunari  
> Toranosuke = Kiyomasa  
> Ichimatsu = Masanori

When Kiyomasa was young and still answered readily to the name Toranosuke, he thought that castles were the grandest things ever.

You were a proper lord when you had your own castle, and people would come to pay homage and bring you presents and all manners of wonderful things from their own homes. A castle had so many rooms you could spend the whole day playing hide-and-seek and not have to use the same hiding place twice, and when the weather was cold, everyone could stay inside and be warm and full because a castle always had coal and wood, food and water. If you have a castle tower, you could build it up so high that at the very top, you could see much further than the distance you could walk all day.

“Lord Hideyoshi built a castle in just one day, you know,” Hanbei had said to him one day after Toranosuke had spent his entire lesson time doodling pictures of castles.

Perhaps Hanbei had intended otherwise, but rather than diminishing Toranosuke’s love for castles, it only raised Hideyoshi’s esteem in his eyes and made him all the more determined to build his own castle.

“Hanbei took Inabayama Castle in just one day,” Hideyoshi told him, when Toranosuke proudly showed him his castle plans. “A castle’s strength lies not in its size or armaments, but in the people it protects, Tora.”

Fearless and boisterous Ichimatsu was the first person he had recruited into his future castle, and his oldest friend swore that no enemy shall ever breach the (hypothetical) castle gates as long as he still breathed. Nene was the second; gentle and kind Nene who was as quick to forgive as she was to punish. Although she would naturally always be part of Hideyoshi’s castle, perhaps she could stay in his castle sometimes too, he asked, blushing furiously, after he had given her a bouquet of carefully picked wildflowers.

Nene had beamed happily and enveloped him in a hug that squeezed the breath out of him. Her rain-soaked ninja garments felt ice-cold against his skin and he vowed to himself that she would never have to be out in the rain while staying at his castle.

He eventually added another person to his (still hypothetical) castle; proud and clever Sakichi, who always had a sharp retort and a solution to every problem ready, yet couldn’t tell a lie to save his life. Sakichi had listened with feigned disinterest as Tora regaled him with all the splendid details of the castle, and then coolly pointed out a dozen flaws in Tora’s grand plans. Perfect, he would put Sakichi in charge of fixing those flaws. Thus, his castle was complete.

But childhood dreams rarely survived the rough and tumbles of growing up, and promises made so easily in the past were just as easily broken in the future.

Kiyomasa watched from the side as Mitsunari oversaw the preparations for the building of Hideyoshi’s newest project. The room was filled with papers, each administrator surrounded by piles of calculations and plans - how much wood, metal and stone would be needed and where they should come from, how many workers to be supplied by each province, the feeding and sheltering of all those people, the careful balancing of Lord Hideyoshi’s whims and the size of his coffers - all of which Mitsunari conducted with deceptive ease.

Thus, Osaka Castle rose from bare ground to become the biggest, grandest and most defensible castle the land had ever seen. It towered over the town on its bed of solid rock, the roofs gleaming in the sun and the rooms filled with the works of the finest artisans in the land. Rows of noble residences encircled the castle, playing attendant and protector at the same time. Hideyoshi’s laughter could be heard along the vast corridors and over the carefully tended gardens, interspersed with admiring voices where each subsequent line of praise was more lavish and grandiose than the last.

At the top of the castle tower, higher than he had ever been in his life and with the land spread out at his feet, Kiyomasa thought that he had never seen a lonelier castle.


	2. Mitsunari

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one is vaguely Kiyomasa/Mitsunari.

When he can no longer hear the hoof beats nor see Kiyomasa’s receding back, Mitsunari runs back into the castle, heading straight for Kiyomasa’s room. He flings the doors open, almost wrenching them from their tracks in his ferocity. The doors opposite him has been left open, the last rays of the evening sun streaming in from the garden beyond to bathe the room in a warm glow.

The emptiness of the room makes him shiver.

He prowls around the room without touching anything, hands clenched tightly in fists. His eyes dart around the room, cataloguing its sparse furnishings, his breath catching involuntarily every time he notes something missing - the empty weapons rack, the bare closet, the writing desk neat with no personal correspondences littering the surface. Nothing there bears the familiar circle of the serpent’s eye crest and the room is as impersonal as any other guest room.

Halfway through his umpteenth circle around the room, Mitsunari stops suddenly. The sun has set while his mind was occupied, and no servant has dared to come in to light the lamps. The room is suddenly too dark, too wide and too empty. He pulls his robe tighter around himself and flees, heading for the warmth and familiarity of his own rooms.

He knows the layout of the castle like the back of his hand. Yet, his room seems too far now, the castle too large and strange, and no matter how fast he runs, the emptiness from the room that was Kiyomasa’s grips his heart.

He stumbles into his room and orders for more candles to be brought in until there is a line of flames along each wall. The castle feels imbalanced, fragile. Where there were once three keystones on his mental layout of the castle, only one remains and Mitsunari lights another candle to stave off the darkness.


	3. Masanori

There were three of them back then, three of them together, and the world’s your oyster when you had your comrades, friends, brothers with you. There was no room too dark to explore, no hill too tall to climb (or roll down), no (made-up) enemies too strong to fight when the three of them were together.

They hadn’t made a pact of brotherhood or anything like the stuff stories are made of because Sakichi had rolled his eyes and Toranosuke had thumped him on his head when he suggested it. _Fool, as if we need something like that_ , Tora had said. _Who would want to be stuck with you guys forever?_ Sakichi added, right before Tora dropped a beetle in his hair.

 

There were three of them back then, and three were too many when two weren’t speaking to each other. He hadn’t knew how tiring it was to keep up two conversations at the same time, and he was probably imagining things, but it felt as though Kiyomasa and Mitsunari were in fact talking to each other even if to all appearances they were talking to him. It was all a little too much to process if he stopped to think about it, but that’s what the wine is there for and he’s a pretty darn good conversationalist, even if he said so himself.

And sometimes, he would say something perfectly innocuous (okay, maybe a little ill-advised) and Kiyomasa would let out a long sigh just as Mitsunari snorted (and tried to cover up by coughing, it fooled no one), and their eyes would meet and small smiles appeared on their faces and for that moment, that too-short moment, there were three of them and everything was right with the world.

But it never lasted long. There were days when even the greenest of the court officials could feel the tension in the air when those two were in the same room, tension that lingered long after one of them had left, without a word ever exchanged between the two. Mitsunari grew closer and closer to Lord Hideyoshi, Masanori and Kiyomasa further and further, as Hideyoshi’s attention shifted from territory expansion to administrative matters. He would admit that he hadn’t got the head for the numbers and logistics that Mitsunari handled with deadly efficiency, but he and Kiyomasa had helped unify the land and they should have a say in how it should be ruled, damn it.

 

He hung out with Kiyomasa more those days. If he got right down to it, Kiyomasa was his oldest friend, even if he got a twinge of guilt every time he thought that, and was certainly his closest one then.

“We should have a party here, just the three of us!” Masanori had said one day, when even Lady Nene had given up on getting Kiyomasa and Mitsunari to talk to each other civilly. “Just you, me and that bighead, with some good food and wine. No pesky lords to please, no work to worry over, it’ll be just like the old times!”

“Why do I have to see him even when I’m not at court?” Kiyomasa grumbled.

“Tora…” Masanori said, letting just a hint of entreaty into his voice, even as he knew it was underhanded to use Kiyomasa’s childhood name.

Kiyomasa flung out a hand in defeat. “Do what you like. But I don’t know if he can spare any of his precious time to entertain the likes of us.”

He had gone over to Mitsunari’s place immediately and was abruptly told that Mitsunari was busy attending to Lord Hideyoshi. He would wait, he said, because he was stubborn enough for the three of them and because… oh fine, because he really, really wanted this.

Mitsunari returned some hours later, long past the customary time for the evening meal and after the sun’s last rays had faded from the sky. Even in the low light of the candles, Masanori could see the shadows beneath his eyes and the distracted look on his face that he always had since young when his mind was busy ruminating over some problem, be it a puzzle Hanbei had set or deciding the livelihoods of tens and thousands of people. His invitation would come at the right time then, Masanori thought. His heart rose in his chest as he saw a flash of indecisiveness and longing on Mitsunari’s face, only to come crashing down when Mitsunari lowered his gaze and shook his head.

“I can’t go. I have work to do,” he said, not meeting Masanori’s eyes.

Kiyomasa’s words earlier echoed in Masanori’s mind, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. “Too busy sucking up to Lord Hideyoshi to spare time for your old _friends_ , huh,” he spat out before he could stop himself.

Mitsunari’s mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed in a flash of anger, and he pulled himself up proud and straight. “At least I have better things to do with my time than to insult a _friend_ in his own home,” he said coldly.

They remained glaring stonily at each other until a servant’s voice nervously announced that a Lord Naoe was here to see Lord Ishida. Masanori realised that he was being dismissed and his mouth twisted into an ugly scowl as he stomped out in a huff.

He had heard that Mitsunari had found new friends, the Sanada kid and that pompous Uesugi retainer. He had also heard that they had even sworn a pact of friendship, or rather, a pact of _honour_. Of course he wasn’t jealous, and he had laughed at the idea of that stiff-necked Mitsunari swearing to some idealistic view, something he wouldn’t be able to put a value to on paper. But perhaps Mitsunari had changed. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one.

 

Lord Hideyoshi’s death broke something in all of them. Lady Nene withdrew from society, Kiyomasa and Mitsunari withdrew closer into their own circles, each privately nursing the same pain and grief. And then they emerged, more stubborn and dead-set in their views than ever.

“Lord Hideyori is still young. We need Ieyasu’s influence to help hold the land together until he comes of age,” Kiyomasa said, repeating an argument all three of them had heard many times.

“Lord Hideyori is still young,” Mitsunari echoed, and then slammed his fist on the table for emphasis. “That’s why we need to limit Ieyasu’s influence or the Toyotomi rule will be no more when he comes of age.”

So on and so forth; the same arguments reiterated again and again without either one of them willing to back down.

He watched helplessly as Kiyomasa stomped out of the room and Mitsunari followed a second later, in the opposite direction but no less sullen. He called after one, and then the other, and finally shouted his frustrations at the empty room. No one told him to shut up, no one smacked him for being noisy, and he realised that the huge aching void inside him was loneliness.

They were breaking apart, their family and all they had sworn to protect were breaking apart right before his eyes, and he hated himself for being utterly powerless to stop it.

 

All of them wanted the same thing, so why did it had to be so complicated? 

“Settle it with a fight!” he had shouted at them. “Just fight it out and the loser has to obey the winner. That’s how things have always been, right?”

“We’re not kids anymore,” Kiyomasa had said wearily. “Things aren’t so simple.”

Mitsunari had looked as though he was going to agree with Kiyomasa for once, then lifted his chin and remarked that fools who only knew how to fight should keep their noses out of matters beyond their comprehension.

He wasn’t sure what had stopped him from following his own advice then, whether it was Kiyomasa’s warning hand or his own misguided conscience that prevented him from closing that short distance between them and hitting that arrogant, selfish bighead for daring to keep him out of matters that concerned his own family.

 

Maybe he should have done it after all. Maybe if he had, the distance between them wouldn’t have widened to the length of a battlefield.

He heaved his huge club up onto his shoulder and surveyed the fog-shrouded plain before him. Rows and rows of soldiers stood behind him, tense and silent, all waiting for the bugle call or gunshot that would signal the start of the battle. The hills around them were visible only as dark masses, enemy and ally alike hidden in the colourless landscape of early dawn.

But he knew they were there. He knew Mitsunari was there, up in his camp all the way across the plain. He would ride straight towards it, strategy be damned. He would crash into Mitsunari’s camp and make him see that things had gone too far, that he was sick and tired of losing his family and he wanted them back like how it was years ago, that the bond they shared ran deeper than vows or bloodlines and could never be broken. And he would punch him if that was what it took, beat his words through all that ridiculous fluff and right into that thick skull, and this time, he would not back down. He would make him understand that _this wasn’t how things should be_.

 

He had won that battle. Things should have gone his way then.

When the news came, his heart had stopped and he was out the door and running _(faster, faster)_ before his mind could even begin to come to terms with what his ears had heard.

There were three of them. There should always be three of them.

He felt as though the air itself had turned into sludge, thick and slow-moving, dragging down every step he took as he pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd. The world faded into a blur around him, his vision narrowed to his goal; the kneeling figure in white, face covered but posture straight and proud, always so proud, even to the end. His fingers bent unwillingly against solid wood and his body slammed against the unyielding barricades before his mind registered that he could go no further. He might have shouted, his throat felt raw and dry, but the deafening roar in his head and the choking tightness around his chest drowned out everything. His breath caught in his throat and his fingers dug deep into the wood because surely, surely time itself would stop if he just tried hard enough to hold on to the past. But the sun rose inexorably to the fated position in the sky and its rays, reflected in the executioner’s blade, blinded him. There was silence, then a soft hiss as the blade swung down, swift and certain, and the life of one of his oldest and dearest friend ended.

This wasn’t how things should be.


End file.
